A tribute to the Valencian work ethic

Featuring my draft recording of “El dilluns jo no treballe”, with various other European “7 days lazy” songs.

In this number from Miguel Asíns Arbó Cancionero popular de la Valencia de los años 20 (1987), the singer doesn’t work on Monday, spends Tuesday improving his the suntan, devotes Wednesday to preparing to rest on Thursday, on Friday readies the accounts for presentation on Saturday, and enjoys a well-earned holiday on Sunday:

There are more versions out on the Gallic fringe. One of three recorded on Jersey is almost identical to the Breton one, and another echoes the Valencian motif of readying oneself on the one day to do nothing on the next:

So is this mañana attitude confined to Romance-speaking lands as yet unafflicted by Protestant ethics and capitalist spirit? Well, no. The oldest dated German example I came across on a brief trawl is a poem by Goethe dealing with the weekly routine of the merry folk of (Lutheran) Weimar, Die Lustigen von Weimar:

Further east still, in what by then had reverted to being Catholic Hungary, daily idleness is expressed in a more simple style in one of Karl Maria Kertbeny‘s translations of Ungarische Volkslieder (1851):

Both, of course, derive from undated but older songs which order the week according to Biblical example, like this folksong from Freiburg im Breisgau included in Ludwig Eck‘s ground-breaking collection, Deutscher Liederhort (1856):

Don’t tell the Chinese, but I fear there’s a great hidden treasure of historical laziness awaiting discovery in this cold, isolated peninsula of hard-working Asia.

Brittany (1): Brittany; Breton: Breizh, pronounced [bʁɛjs] or [bʁɛχ]; Gallo: Bertaèyn, pronounced [bəʁtaɛɲ]) is a cultural region) in the northwest of France covering the western part of Armorica, as it was known during the period of Roman occupation.